eldomtom2

They all seem to be ones operated by German freight operators, however the Captrain one at least would be plausible on a French or Spanish layout if renumbered.

But if you're budget-conscious, surely it makes more sense to go for a scale like OO or N where there's a much greater amount of second-hand stuff available?

Hmm, there's a fair bit I'd like to respond to here. "The issue I have with some of the more hysterical attempts at “journalism” on this subject is that they don’t seem to want to actually engage in any debate on said definition, or understand why such a debate might exist." - In all honesty, the organisations they're criticising rarely present it as a debate either... "some of this opposition just seems to be rejecting any kind of new research that complicates or challenges previous narratives, even on subjects that aren’t seen as very controversial." - I think this raises the question of what is the subject and how it is supposedly not seen as "controversial". "I find it quite sad that anyone who claims to care about a historic site would not wish to see it researched, explored and written about from the widest range of possible angles." - I think this statement fundamentally misunderstands the nature of historiography. New perspectives are not merely added to old ones; frequently they replace them, and the old perspectives are deemed invalid. This is even more so the case when comes to things like museums, which rarely if ever deliberately present multiple historiographical perspectives without presenting one as more correct than others. In this context one can understand how different historiographical perspectives can be seen as a threat. This is an interesting attitude to take on a railway enthusiast forum. The railway preservation movement, with very rare exceptions, is very big on cosmetically restoring stuff to its "original" condition, ensuring modern-day extensions to heritage buildings are in keeping with the style, and other activities of that like that academics tend to take a dim view of. Therefore by making fairly sweeping speculation about motives you are also implicating the railway preservation movement here.

To wade back into the more "political" stuff, I do have some comments to make. Oświęcim (under German rule renamed Auschwitz) was and is a railway junction of some significance. The idea that a locomotive would have been assigned there because of Auschwitz-Birkenau - when it is an undeniable fact that the deportation trains to the concentration camps were low-priority traffic to the extent that planned deportations were delayed due to lack of rolling stock - is implausible. If you want to argue that there's enough of a chance that it was used on train to the Auschwitz camp that they should mention it that's a fair enough argument, but your argument goes beyond that. This is a good example of how popular culture warps people's perceptions. You probably wouldn't think twice about a model of a third-class passenger carriage built in the first quarter of the twentieth century, but they were the stock of choice for trains deporting Jews from Western and Central Europe. "Context" is a difficult word. What "context" is necessary is a fundamentally political and subjective opinion. Hmm. I'm not sure that's actually the case - does the museum have other black and white dioramas of non-Holocaust subjects? The idea that "we don't know what the colours actually were, so we'll do it in a black and white" reflects its creators' beliefs about how the Holocaust should be portrayed. Recent events at the Oscars (without taking a position here) serve as an excellent example of how the "memory" of the Holocaust is perceived as meaning different things by different people. Most of the WD locos sent over to France survived the fall of France. Most stayed in France for the duration of the war and were returned to the UK after its end, but not all - some were apparently sent to China while at least one Jinty and a couple of Dean Goods survived in Central Europe into the 1950s - one Dean Goods remained in East German service until 1955. There are photos of the Jinty and one of the Dean Goods on this German forum thread.

So it isn't apolitical, right? This is assuming that there is a definition of "the purpose of museums" that everyone agrees on. I don't think there is. I'm saying the topic was political from the start, and thus was unable to be politicised.

Hmmm - I don't the use of the word "politicise" is fair here. If you asked the writers of the "Addressing the Past" report which kicked off a lot of the debate, I'm sure they'd say that their research is relevant today...

It'll be outside of state control in the same way that BR was and Network Rail is - that is, not very much.

This is not part of the ERTL range but rather the "Take n Play" range produced by Fisher-Price - these are generally less useful than the ERTL range (which has now been out of production for two decades) as they are not dimensionally accurate either to the real-life prototypes or the characters in the TV show.

The modern railway is certainly more suited to such a style of layout than the steam era one, since it can be realistically operated by a single signaller.

I've recently purchased several freight working timetables covering the WCML between Preston and Carlisle in the 1950s and 60s, and am interested in further information regarding the workings over the WCML - the WTTs only contain the start/end points and headcodes of the services. In particular, I'm interested in information about the locos and rolling stock used. I am particularly interested in information regarding which services were likely to be hauled by Austerity 2-8-0s and 9Fs.

That may very well be true if you actually look at the prices (bearing in mind of course that measuring inflation, cost of living, etc is an inexact science), but that is not the public perception. And a comment on recent posts - absolutely railway enthusiasm is alive and well. But not all railway enthusiasts are interested in model railways.

For an external perspective, here's discussion of a recent Telegraph article on the UK and model railway subreddits - obviously Reddit is a site with a userbase that skews much younger than here, so users' thoughts make interesting reading.

Of course with the idea of computers vs. model trains being brought up it is worth mentioning that rail enthusiasts who in the past might have gotten into model railways now might get into train simulators instead...

Of course it should be noted that this is all based on Withuhn's interviews with two employees at Franklin, the poppet valve manufacturer. The actual records have been lost to time, which places the story a bit too far away from the source for me to put much stock in it, personally.

I suspect that Beeching's attitude was that passengers travelling one stop along a line was a market they could do without. He is explicit in The Development of the Major Railway Trunk Routes that in his view "shorter distance and cross-country" journeys were better left to road transport.